


A Requiem for the Living

by aejrogota



Category: Dissidia: Final Fantasy Opera Omnia, Final Fantasy Type-0, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Campfire stories, Canon-Compliant, Crossover, Dialogue-Driven, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, One Shot, Opera Omnia, Pining, Rem's POV, Slice of Life, for DFFOO, some liberties taken for Type-0, writing style experiment based on FF7/FF8 flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28386894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aejrogota/pseuds/aejrogota
Summary: After King joins Mog’s warriors, Rem reflects on the circumstances by which Materia brought her to the world of respite. The warriors of light listen to her story over the campfire as they bond over their shared experiences. (Set at the end of Act 1, Chapter 3: The Lost Kingdom of Thronus.)
Relationships: Cloud Strife & Tifa Lockhart, King & Seven (Final Fantasy Type-0), Rem Tokimiya & King (Final Fantasy Type-0), Rem Tokimiya & Tifa Lockhart, Rem Tokimiya/Machina Kunagiri
Kudos: 5





	A Requiem for the Living

Rem stared blankly into the crackling fire as King heaved another log onto it. A few of the warriors were slumped around the campfire, rendered wordless in their battleborn exhaustion.

Mog would have chatted the ragtag band into far higher spirits, but he wasn’t around. Their guardian and guide had embarked with a few of their comrades to fetch the airship. They had left it moored back on the beachhead, far from the distortive influences of the torsion they had just closed.

She felt a little guilty at their collective silence.

King took a seat next to Rem. He huddled within his crimson cape and shivered in the cold. The stars twinkled overhead in a sky, rendered clear by frigid air drifting in from the mountains to the north. Rem didn’t recognize any of their constellations.

“So, how long have you all been wandering around together?”

King hadn’t been looking at anyone when he asked the question. The Warrior of Light took it upon himself to respond.

“The better part of a month, I think.”

The Warrior of Light shifted his seating, removing his gauntlets and placing his hands closer to the campfire.

“But Materia didn’t call us all at the same time. At the beginning there was just four of us.”

He looked around and pointed to himself, Vivi, and Rem.

“And there’s Sazh, who went off with Mog to get the airship. Our other friends here joined us afterward.”

Hope waved at King with a warm smile. Cloud nodded at him curtly and smilelessly but with great mindfulness; he was careful not to disturb Tifa, who had fallen into a light and restless slumber on his shoulder. Impatient, Vivi gently beckoned at the fire with his high mage’s staff. The flame jumped at his earnest encouragement but was far too meek for his satisfaction. He sighed in resignation.

King looked over to Rem.

“A month? I can’t remember you ever going AWOL for that long.”

Rem shrugged.

“There’s a lot of things I don’t understand about this place. Maybe time doesn’t pass here like it does back home.”

King nodded and looked back at the fire, silent for another moment.

“Hey, Rem? What is the last thing you remember before you were called here?”

She leaned back and looked at the stars.

“Hm. We were about to get on an airship to Iscah.”

* * *

_(It was a special mission.)_

_(Special?)_

_(Not to any of you. To us, though. Machina and I. Class Second had been sent to the Militesi front after Concordia declared war on us. We were being sent to support them.)_

_(Meroë.)_

_(Yeah. Meroë.)_

Seven pulled King aside as the two left the tunnel’s end towards their departure gate.

“I can’t remember her ever looking this distraught.”

“Huh?”

Seven motioned over to Rem, who was leaning on the rail next to the platform conductor, shaded by the shadow of the airship. She apprehensively looked past them at the stream of Class Second cadets entering the gate from Akademeia’s central courtyard. The few odd capes in the indigo sea were green or pink. No one Rem would have been so anxiously waiting for.

“He wasn’t in class today. She went looking all over for him.”

King looked to Seven expectantly.

“Is there something you want to do about it?”

“He wasn’t assigned to this sortie because he wasn’t in class to accept it. Why would she be waiting for him?”

“Are you worried her distractedness will be a liability in the field?”

She paused.

“I don’t know if I would have put it that way.”

Seven sighed.

“I’m worried about her, King. She’s one of us. That’s all.”

“Seven, Command only needs six of us on this mission. If she needs to take some time, then she should have it. If I could trust any of us to be a good judge of her readiness, I’d trust you.”

_(But…you didn’t trust me.)_

_(No, that’s not it. You are an exceptional fighter, Rem, and I trust you implicitly. We just knew what Machina means to you. If someone had broken one the others’ hearts like that, Seven and I would have told them the same exact thing.)_

_(Oh! No, it isn’t like that at all. He is my best friend, and I am his.)_

_(...)_

_(Right. So anyway, that’s what you and Seven were talking about before you came to me. Our whole conversation_ was _a bit weird, honestly. That does put some things into context.)_

Rem looked back at Seven, wide-eyed.

“I- is there something wrong?”

Seven frowned uncomfortably. She peeked up at King for some support, but he seemed flustered as well.

“No, we…just wanted to remind you that this is not an all-hands mission. I know you volunteered. But we could ask Cinque or Eight to cover for you. I’ll even take the heat from the CO if you bail.”

“There’s nothing to worry about. I’m here with you all till the end. You two know that.”

Rem smiled nervously.

“Right?”

With a nod, Seven awkwardly patted Rem’s shoulder. She slipped into the ambling funnel of indigo capes and boarded the airship. King followed shortly thereafter, taking his leave from Rem with a cool nod. Rem looked at them quizzically as they passed her.

_(Why weren’t you more forthcoming with me?)_

_(We didn’t know what you were feeling. Not exactly. Just that you were feeling it a lot. The two of you are a part of us, but…you were always separate from us. You usually don’t go to us if you need to vent about something.)_

_(Hm. Well, you were partly right. I was really upset that day. And it was about Machina. But it was a little more complicated of a matter than separation anxiety.)_

“Are you boarding or not? It is almost the top of the hour.”

Rem turned to the conductor. There was enough for two fares in her hand.

“Yeah. Just one more minute.”

_(You mentioned this was an important mission to you and him.)_

_(Well…it wasn’t just about the mission.)_

_(What was it, then? I can’t imagine that there was something there you wanted to do. We’re all just kids, and Meroë has been under Militesi occupation now for-)_

_(7 years.)_

_(…Oh.)_

_(It had been almost to the day, actually.)_

* * *

“It was — well, it would have been – our first chance to go back since we had fled. Machina and I had only just reunited before we tried to take down that crystal jammer. We hadn’t yet had the chance to talk about so many things.”

Rem continued to stare into the fire.

“Before then, I had only vague memories of how we survived. We just kept running and running until we ended up in Rokol. I don’t remember anything after that. I just woke up weeks later in Akademeia’s military hospital. I almost didn’t make it, and I can only assume that he was in similar shape. I lost contact with him after that. All I knew is that he couldn't possibly be dead.”

The fire crackled as a seam ruptured the log’s bark, ventilating its smoldering core and brightening it.

“I remember it all like it was yesterday, being back in Alerion. The heat of the fire…the pain in my body from all the running. Their CO barking commands, the moonlight glinting on their soldiers’ bayonets.”

Rem looked back at King.

“You saw how it was back in Togoreth. Milites has always been the same.”

“How do you mean?”

Bright Mako eyes were fixed intently on her own, engrossed in her story. Cloud spoke in a low voice; it just barely failed to mask a tremble. Tifa groaned in groggy complaint as she awakened, reaching instinctually for his arm to steady herself.

“No quarter, even for non-combatants.”

Cloud looked down at the ground.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s alright, Cloud. In our world, nobody remembers the dead. Our crystal carries our grief for us so we won’t have to.”

“…Wow. I’m not sure who I would be if those kinds of memories were just taken from me.”

Tifa frowned. She was still huddled into Cloud, seeking shelter from the chill of the evening breeze.

Rem nodded.

“I tried not to let it take more than my grief.”

She looked back up to Tifa.

“Every member of our country is given a Knowing Tag with their identification on it, so we can have proof they lived even after they are forgotten. But I think Machina and I were the only survivors from our village. After all, I was the only one who was around to collect their Knowing Tags after Class Eighth went behind the lines to recover them.”

Rem let out a quiet and bittersweet laugh.

“Well, Machina went back to the Registry, but it was just to collect his mom’s tag. Maybe I’m just unusually sentimental.”

“Rem…I don’t think there is anything unusual about what you were feeling.”

Rem paused, spending a moment in thought.

“I guess I hope that one day someone will speak for me, when my time comes. None of those people deserved to be forgotten.”

They fell quiet again for a short time. Hope glanced up at Rem for a moment, words perched pensively on his tongue, but he dropped his gaze back down to the fire. Tifa eventually spoke up.

“Hey…If you ever want to talk about that – “

“Likewise.”

Tifa looked up at her suddenly. Rem smiled sadly at her.

“I had a feeling, and I’m sorry. I wish we weren’t able to relate to each other in this way.”

* * *

_(So Rem, you mentioned that you were summoned to the world of respite shortly after the airship.)_

_(Yeah.)_

_(I assume that means you don’t know of anything that came afterwards?)_

_(Heh. No. Can you believe it, King? I didn’t even get to revisit Meroë. Or the ruins of Alerion. If Machina wasn’t going to get on that airship with me then it was probably for the better, I suppose.)_

_(For what it’s worth, Materia summoned me not much later after you. I do remember you taking some time for yourself after we liberated Meroë Town.)_

_(So, he really never did come see me, huh?)_

_(Maybe he did find you. Maybe he didn’t. But we never saw him, and you never mentioned anything to us. I’m sorry to say it, Rem. He didn’t come back for a really long time. There was this desperate battle over the Strait of Judecca not too long after Meroë; Materia called me here right after that. Even then he still hadn’t returned.)_

_(…)_

“There’s your minute, miss.”

“…Yeah.”

It was very difficult for her to pull her eyes away from the gate’s entrance even now.

Rem tried to feel something she could control. Anger? Rage? All she could muster was despair. After all, she trusted him. If not here, then where was he? If not for this reason then what was his better one? A horrible feeling stirred in her chest. Why didn’t he say anything to the others? To her? Something had happened to him just before Class Zero was betrayed in Ingram; he never cleared the air about it with them.

Rem shook her head and rubbed her eyes to stifle any tears. As she turned towards the airship walkway, Rem closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and made a wish.

_(A wish?)_

_(Yeah.)_

_(You wished…to come here?)_

_(…)_

_(Did you wish for us to be here too?)_

_(…)_

_(Rem…?)_

_(I don’t know. I wished for…what I wanted. What I didn’t have. What I needed? All I know is in that moment I just wanted whatever it was so, so badly. I’m not sure if that makes any sense.)_

_(…Did you get what you wished for?)_

_(…I don’t know.)_

When Rem opened her eyes she was very, very far from home. She was overwhelmed by a soul-wrenching terror as she was cast adrift in a shining void. Mechanical edifices of inconceivable purpose stretched across the entirety of her field of vision, drifting into and out of discrete forms, coalescing from and melting into coarse amber nebulae thrown all about the starless space. Millions of fragmented rings spalled from the shifting artificial forms as they self-annihilated. On occasion, a string of hundreds or thousands of the rings would incidentally align. They would become impaled by a brilliant spike of light which would sublime them into transient incandescent shimmers.

After a few moments, thousands of rings happened to align on Rem’s position. It felt as though she had started to accelerate at some unfathomable rate. The large edifices became grossly distorted in her field of view as if smeared like oblique raindrops over glass. Each patch shattered into shimmering schlieren, red and blue fragments verging on a single warm red sphere at the center of her field of view. As she beheld this perfect sphere it reached out to touch her heart and warmed it, soothing her extraordinary anxiety. The red sphere grew and grew until it consumed everything her eyes could see. It grew until it consumed her, melding with her body and her soul. Suddenly, she found herself floating amidst an endless expanse of cloudy mists.

Shades of grey and blue-green flickered in her surroundings at a lazy dreamlike pace, as if beheld at a great distance from a neighboring summit’s clear air. At the heart of this fantasia floated another woman in a multicolored gown, flanked by a skirt of teal swords, bearing an ornate staff and a platinum crown. She stood before a brilliant crystal core not unlike that of the Vermilion Bird’s back on Arkham.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

Rem looked upon the spirit in awe and fear. She opened her mouth stupidly.

“Did you…hear my wish?”

The woman looked flustered at her interruption. After a brief pause in thought, she continued to speak.

“The moogle summoned you here because a powerful will called out to him, and it heeded his response. So yes, I suppose we did hear your wish.”

“Who are you?”

“Materia. The goddess and creator of a world of respite beyond all lands.”

“A…world of respite?”

A warm tide roiled in Rem’s chest and sent a shiver of anticipation down her spine.

“Respite…for who?”

“Well, for you. And for many others like you; warriors with wills of the light. It is for you _if_ it can be stabilized against forces of darkness.”

“So, you need something from me. And this world is my…reward?”

Materia nodded.

“Rem, will you lend me your strength?”

“Am I dead?”

“What?”

“We learned as little kids that the crystal spirits of the dead go back through Etro’s gate into the unseen realm.”

“…No. As I said, I’m not Etro, and I don’t think you were dead when we summoned you.”

Rem paused in thought, somewhat troubled by Materia’s confusion.

“Will my other friends be here, too?”

“I have been watching them. They may join you when the moment is appropriate.”

_(So…you_ did _expect her to summon us.)_

_(Well, I didn’t know very much about Materia. I still don’t. But something about the way she presented herself made me feel like she didn’t entirely know what she was doing. It was all very…scripted? And I didn’t know if I wanted her to summon you all to this place just yet, anyway. What if it ended up being a worse place than Orience? What if-)_

_(Rem, that’s not what I was getting at.)_

_(Huh?)_

_(You were summoned to a world that promised respite. A place apart from war and conflict. If your first impulse was to will us to such a world, too, and to fight for our right to have a place in it…then I suppose it makes sense that the goddess of light found your heart before she found any of ours.)_

_(King, the rest of us aren’t here. None of you are enjoying any respite, at all.)_

_(They don’t have it_ yet _. And even if I don’t understand everything that is going on behind the scenes here, I do believe in you. And I’ll fight to help you prepare this world for their arrival.)_

“So, Rem, will you lend me your strength?”

“…Yeah. I will protect this world, if it means the others will find respite, too.”

Materia nodded. She closed her eyes and raised her arms, overwhelming her chambers with a warm and joyous light. Rem’s field of vision was again consumed. She felt her consciousness curl away from her physical form. The last breath she took fell out from underneath her lungs and dispelled itself back into open air. The process, far from painful, was ecstatic.

Rem opened her eyes. She was standing in a warm and sunny meadow. A knight in armor, sprawled out on his back, roused after apparently having been knocked unconscious. Rem was taken aback.

“Are you all right?”

The mysterious warrior sat up awkwardly. His chest armor had been rent apart by a terrible blow but Rem could not see any blood or obvious signs of physical injury. Clods of black loam soiled his yellow cape and the tips of his white hair.

Rem instinctively stooped down to help him up. He used her support to easily leverage himself back into a standing position, much to Rem’s surprise and to that of the strange hatted boy to her right.

“Where…am I?”

“M-monsters! Over there!”

The boy pointed into the distance with an air of panic. Rem instinctually reached for her daggers as she watched four snarling goblins hurtle fearlessly towards them.

* * *

The airship’s propulsion system overrode the silent night with a middling whine from beyond the horizon's edge. The Warrior of Light looked over his shoulder in the direction of the lost kingdom’s beachhead.

“That was a lot quicker than expected.”

Cloud shrugged.

“Zidane and Yuffie are pretty nimble. Maybe they led the others on a downhill scramble instead of taking the long path.”

“And Mog can float. Honestly, it is probably our esteemed pilot who was dying to keep their pace,” Hope added with a chuckle. The others laughed with him.

The Warrior of Light and Tifa excused themselves to gather Bartz and the others on watch as the airship’s distant murmuring grew steadily into a roar.

Sazh had anchored the airship near to their position in what felt like no time at all. It wasn’t a minute later when Mog bumbled happily down the walkway and welcomed them all aboard.

King stood up, extending his hand to Rem to help her to her feet.

“Thanks for sharing.”

“Thanks for being there to listen.”

As the two moved towards the walkway, Rem looked back. She closed her eyes and, with a deep breath, reminded herself of her wish. When she opened them, she was still in the world of respite. She smiled to herself as she looked up past the trees and at the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> The interactions between Rem and King in DFFOO while in Thronus were what initially motivated me to buy and play Type-0. Although it turns out they don’t really get to know each other too well in the game, I’ve always believed that King and Rem might have grown closer while in the world of respite. After all, as far as Class Zero is concerned, all they had was each other for much of their journey together.


End file.
